The signs created quite a bit of buzz around Carroll Gardens. Barclays Nets Community Alliance paid for part of the Carroll School's schoolyard renovation through an organization called Out2Play. In exchange for the donation, the school allowed the signs to be hung on the fence. (Why Out2Play or former Councilman DeBlasio who secured funding for the renovation did not get the same consideration was never fully explained.) Some in the community, including me, found that commercializing our public playground is a bad idea and creates a slippery slope.

Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report, who has been a vocal and tireless critic of Barclays involvement in the Atlantic Yards project, agreed. He writes:

I'd point out that, when Out2Play seeks individual donations, they don't advertise the possibility of getting your name on a school playground. That must be reserved for bigger donors.

Out2Play explains:

Every dollar we raise from the private sector often translates into nine dollars in public funding. Each of our playspaces costs an average of $250,000.

How much did Barclays give to P.S. 58? I haven't checked, but would note that the initial $150,000 grant was supposed to help refurbish eight playgrounds.

That's less than $20,000 a playground--pretty good if you get a sign out of it too... (more here)

Not bad, indeed. Where else can you get a prominent advertising space for approximately $20,000?

What does this even mean? "Crazy Crazy (Rich) White People! When Will It end?"

Are we taking this to mean that the "Crazy (White) People" are the Barclay's developers and FCRC? Because this could easily be making fun of the people complaining about the signs and making them out to be such a big deal.

Either way, whoever stuck those on needs to up their game. If they're going to be clever vandals, then their vandalism needs to be clever.

First you ruin a neighborhood (Brooklyn - wait to see the traffic havoc etc. the Barclay Nets area will create), so that you can make gazillion dollars with your project. Then you pick the most innocent place - in this case a school - "donate" a few bucks badly needed by the school because the city is giving tax breaks to wealthy developers instead of making sure schools get what they need. And you humiliate the neighborhood with your self-promoting signs, sticking the people's noses in your sh** even more. It's perverse, and we shouldn't have to put up with this people. Why are we???